ill, dressed in purple robes, with
masks on their faces. The spectators were much pleased with them for a
considerable time, when a wag who was present, having brought with him a
quantity of nuts, threw a handful amongst them. The dance was
immediately forgotten, and the performers from pyrrhic dancers, relapsed
into apes, who went chattering and snapping at one another, and fighting
for nuts; so that in a few moments the masks were crumpled, the clothes
torn to rags, and the ape dance, which had been so much extolled,
terminated amidst peals of laughter. Such is the history of mock
philosophers."

The above story may serve to exhibit Lucian's views, and his love of
humorous illustration. He indulges in many fancies, such as the
complaint of the letter S against T, which had in Attic been substituted
for it.

Another kind of pleasantry which he brings forward is interesting,
inasmuch as after having been in fashion among the grammarians, and
reviving among the monks in the middle ages it has now fallen entirely
out of use. It may be regarded as being a kind of continuation of the
philosophical "hard questions" of ancient times, originated with the
Sophists, and was entirely confined to logical subtleties affording
diversion, but not awakening any emotion sufficient to cause laughter.
Lucian makes a parasite ask his host after dinner to solve such riddles
as "The Sorites and the Reaper," and the "Horned Syllogism." The latter
proposition was, "What you have not lost that you still have. You have
not lost horns, therefore you have horns." In "The Sale of the
Philosophers," in which Jupiter puts them all up to auction to see what
will be bid for them, Chrysippus gives some similar examples. "A stone
is a substance, is it not?" "Certainly." "A living being is also a
substance." "Yes." "And you are a living being--therefore you are a
stone." Chrysippus then offers to turn him back into a man. "Is every
substance a living being?" "No." "Is a stone a living being?" "No." "But
you are a substance?" "Yes." "And a living being; then, although you are
a substance you are not a stone, because you are a living being."

Lucian's crusade against vice is of so general a kind as to remind us
more of some of the old philosophers than of the Roman satirists. At the
same time he says he has only spoken against impostors, and is only the
enemy of false pretence, quackery, lies, and puffing. But we may suppose
that he would not be sparing